Joan's picks: None of this is True and Fire Weather

None of this is True by Lisa Jewell. She’s well known for great psychological thrillers and her new one is outstanding. It’s about a woman, Alix Summers, who finds herself the subject of her own popular true crime podcast. While out celebrating her 45th birthday, she meets another woman, Josie, doing the exact same thing - they’re birthday twins. They build a relationship and Josie persuades Alix that she’d be a great subject for Alix’s podcast series. Before Alix knows it this woman has inveigled her way into Alix’s life and into her home. But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.  Fire Weather by John Vaillant. Outstanding and utterly captivating non fiction. Francesca may remember a book published many years ago called The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. I reckon this is the fire equivalent. In 2016 a wildfire erupted in the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada - a city at the heart of the petroleum industry. The depth of reporting in this book - the information he provides about everything that laid the grounds for this to happen, and what it was like is extraordinary - one of the best books I’ve read in the last year. The fire was so strong that it created its own weather system and scientists said that the energy it released was equivalent to 4 atomic bombs as per Hiroshima, every minute. The authorities were caught completely off guard and unprepared but managed to evacuate 88,000 people in a day - the human side of this is riveting. The fire burned from May 2016 through to August 2017.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.